“Let’s get moving. Rico, have your orcs take the lead,” Marie ordered.

“Grulnok’s, take point, but be sure to stop and let us know if you see anything,” I told my minions who grunted in reply.

We began to slowly move down the passageway, our steps making far more noise than I was comfortable with. The ground was rough cut stone with bits of rock and dust covering it, like a team had dug this mine shaft and did the bare minimum to clear it out afterword.

With constant curves, the passageway didn’t allow us to see more than a dozen yards or so ahead of us. The lit torches every thirty or so feet continued, giving us just enough light to see and maneuver with. At the front of our group, Grulnok stopped, and I pushed forward to see what had caught his attention. On the right side of the passageway was a door. It looked to have been cobbled together from scraps of wood, and we could hear the sounds of voices inside.

“I can’t make out what they’re saying, can you?” Marie whispered after squeezing in to see what was going on.

“No, maybe our Linguistic Adaptation Interface is taking a bit longer than normal to kick in. Maybe it’s the limited mana, or the weird nature of these dungeons. How do you want to play this?” I asked.

“Send in your orcs and we’ll follow behind,” Marie suggested. We arranged ourselves with Quinn right behind the orcs, then me, Marie, and with Elliot bringing up the rear. Melvin slid up to the ceiling and would make his own way in without impeding anyone else’s progress. Rupert and Lillia would stay in the passageway and make sure nothing charged in behind us.

“Go,” I whispered to Grulnok who dispensed with trying to open the door and instead just barreled right through it. Shrieks of panic and alarm were shouted at their entrance, and I waited for the duplicate Grulnok and then Quinn to enter before I could get inside and see what we were facing. My magic missile pistol was out, and I started to scan for targets.

The chamber was a large one, and filled with a half dozen small figures, half of which were stumbling out of crude bunks along the far wall. About the size of a gnome, the things we were facing looked vaguely reptilian, with a long, tooth-filled snout and a leathery tail. Even as I sighted the weapon on one of them, my brain processed what I was looking at. It was a kobold.

Both Grulnok’s charged, roaring their war cries at the startled occupants. The nearest pair had been sitting over a small fire, roasting what looked like one of the camel spiders on a spit. They grabbed short spears and stood to meet the orcs while their four companions crawled out of bed and grabbed anything they could use as a weapon.

My first magic missile hit one of the kobolds near the bunks. He was stooped over to grab a mining pick, and my missile hit him in the lower back before punching through his unarmored body. Back at the fire, the Grulnok’s had already cut down the first pair of kobolds and were now blocking my view of the others. Quinn was right on their heels, his mace held at the ready.

Other than my one shot with the pistol, the rest of us proved not to be needed as the veteran Grulnok’s hacked and smashed the last of the kobolds in a matter of seconds. Things got quiet as the rest of the team filed in. Marie had us start to look around the place for anything important.

“These guys don’t even have any decent loot,” Elliot complained as he searched the rather smelly bunks.

“What do you expect, they’re regular kobolds,” Quinn countered.

“Each of them has a coin pouch, grab those,” I said, spotting an identical pouch on each kobold.

“You want me to touch dead bodies, no way,” Elliot complained.

“Either you help out, or you don’t get a cut of anything we find in here,” Marie threatened.

I had to admit, the orcs had made quite a nasty mess of the kobolds, but Elliot reluctantly joined Quinn as they pulled the coin pouches off the fallen. Inside each was just a few copper coins, though one had a set of dice carved from bone. Quinn rolled them a few times, laughing when it was painfully obvious that the dice had been weighted. It made sense that the kobold with the dice had the most copper in his purse.

“They’re not dissipating into mana vapor,” Marie noted. She was right, in a typical dungeon, the minions would disappear like my figurines did when they were killed, leaving behind any loot the dungeon deemed acceptable for the effort of defeating them. Here, it was obvious that these bodies weren’t going to disappear save for the normal decaying process that I wasn’t going to stand around and watch,

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Calvin did say that none of the other teams found a dungeon core. It’s like parts of a dungeon had been cut off and dropped in various places,” Elliot offered. Despite his attitude, the kid was smart and had brought up a good point.

“You may be right, but let’s push on, there’s more to this dungeon and we can’t leave until we face the final boss, whatever that is,” Marie ordered.

We moved back into the passageway, keeping our same marching order as we moved deeper into the not quite a dungeon. Twice more, we found rooms like the one we had already cleared. Inside each was just one pair of kobolds, but the rooms held enough bunks to each house somewhere between eight and twelve kobolds. Between the orcs and Quinn, who proved to be surprisingly skilled with his mace, none of the kobolds managed to injure our team.

“Each of the three bunk rooms look like they were set up to hold more kobolds, so, where’s the rest of them?” Elliot asked.

“I’m not sure, but I expect we’ll run into them at some point. It doesn’t look like this dungeon is big on branching passageways, so I don’t think we’ve missed anything yet. The other dungeons were supposed to be small, with only a few rooms on each level. We should be reaching the end of this level before long,” I offered.

We found one more kobold barracks as we had been calling them. This one was empty of any kobolds, but from the amount of blood on the ground, I figured the prior occupants weren’t going to be an issue for us. Only a hundred yards of so further down the passageway, we could hear kobolds shouting in the distance. Turning a final corner, the small passageway opened into a huge cavern strewn about with mining equipment and kobolds.

“Hold up, they haven’t spotted us yet, but they’re getting ready for a fight,” Marie said. Both Grulnok’s moved back into the passageway where they couldn’t be seen, and I joined Marie at the mouth of the cavern.

I could spot at least a half dozen kobolds from my vantage point, and each was armed with either one of their short spears, or a mining implement like a shovel or pick. Another passageway on the opposite side of the cavern had their attention, and from passageway, kobold battle cries and shrieks of pain were heard. A kobold, larger than the others and obviously in charge, strode from the far passageway, shouting orders to the kobolds inside the cavern.

“Hungries are coming, get ready to smash stab. Someone gets go and wake the sleepers to come helps!” the kobold leader shouted. Our linguistic adaptation interface was finally catching on and translating, if a bit crudely, the kobold speech.

“Everyone back,” Marie whispered. We shuffled back around the bend in the passageway, out of sight of kobolds in the cavern.

“Why are we moving back,” Elliot whined from further back.

“Shut up, Elliot, the kobolds just sent someone to wake up the kobolds back in the barracks. I’d rather not give away our presence just yet. Rico, have your orcs take out the messenger they send,” Marie said.

We waited as the kobold inside the cavern shouted more orders, trying to get the kobolds to build some kind of barricade across the passageway entrance. The kobold sent to wake the others in the barracks sprinted around the corner, only having time to let out a small yelp before the pair of Grulnok’s smashed him into paste.

Marie and I crept back around the corner to see if the kobolds had noticed the demise of their messenger. His yelp hadn’t been heard and now the kobolds had other problems to worry about. A slew of kobolds came streaming out of the far passageway, screaming, and looking over their shoulders at something pursing them. The leader shouted at them to get out of the way as the kobolds already in the chamber pushed several mining carts across the opening and stepped back from their impromptu defenses.

The fleeing kobolds halted near their leader, and I could count a total of around twenty of them inside the chamber now. Their leader pulled a gleaming shortsword from a sheath at his belt, pushing most of the other kobolds into position behind the mine carts. A couple of kobolds tried to sneak off, but the leader spotted their efforts and slapped them with the flat of his blade. Keeping a few of the newcomers nearby, the leader sent the bulk of his force to defend the mine cart barricade.

“We’s stays here, sleepy friends be here to fights too after messenger wakey wakeses them,” the leader said with confidence. The thought of additional allies coming to reinforce them seemed to put a bit more steel in their backbones. Little did they know, all the kobolds between here and the dungeon entrance had already been slain by our team.

There was a commotion over near the mine carts, and at first, I couldn’t see what was going on. Kobolds were frantically stabbing with spears and swinging mining picks. The scrum of kobolds blocked my view of whoever they were fighting. Their efforts took on a more frantic pitch when one of the kobolds screamed in pain and fell back from the carts.

I finally caught a glimpse of what was attacking the kobolds. It was more of the camel spiders. One, about the same size as the ones that had charged out of the dungeon, had grasped onto the kobold’s face with its eight legs and was chewing away at him. Another kobold stepped back and helpfully swung his mining pick into the monster, killing both the spider and his hapless ally.

More of the spiders charged through the gap in the line, swarming up the legs of nearby kobolds or charging toward the leader and the trio of kobolds he’d kept at his side. It looked like the kobolds were being overrun, but I was more than happy to let the two hostile forces kill each other off. We’d swoop in and deal with the weakened victor.

“Elliot, I think you need to get one of your fireballs ready,” I said as Marie moved aside to let him take her place and view the commotion.